undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Removed Product page on our website, what to do

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Removed Product page on our website, what to do

Technical SEO
2
3
882
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • DutchG
    DutchG last edited by May 9, 2015, 12:46 AM

    We just removed an entire product category on our website, (product pages still exist, but will be removed soon as well)

    Should we be setting up re-directs, or can we simply delete this category and product 
    pages and do nothing?

    We just received this in Google Webmasters tools: Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error.

    We have not updated the sitemap yet...Would this be enough to do or should we do more?

    You can view our website here: http://tinyurl.com/6la8

    We removed the entire "Spring Planted Category"

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • DutchG
      DutchG @DirkC last edited by May 16, 2015, 3:42 AM May 16, 2015, 3:42 AM

      Another amazing easy to understand and clear answer. Thank you Dirk!

      As we are considering not offering spring bulbs at all anymore, I just leave it to a 404 page.

      Thanks again!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • DirkC
        DirkC last edited by May 16, 2015, 3:43 AM May 9, 2015, 6:31 AM

        Hi,

        Both redirects & leaving as 404 (or 410) are valid options.

        If you are removing this entire category & corresponding products because you stop selling them - you could put a custom 404 (or 410), explaining the visitor that the products are no longer available and you could indicate the alternative products you can offer them.

        According to Google (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2409439?hl=en)

        "When you remove a page from your site, think about whether that content is moving somewhere else, or whether you no longer plan to have that type of content on your site.

        • When moving content to a new URL, redirect the old URL to the new URL—that way when users come to the old URL looking for that content, they’ll be automatically redirected to something relevant to what they were looking for.
        • _When you permanently remove content without intending to replace it with newer, related content, let the old URL return a 404 or 410. Currently Google treats 410s (Gone) the same as 404s (Not found). _

        Returning a code other than 404 or 410 for a non-existent page (or redirecting users to another page, such as the homepage, instead of returning a 404) can be problematic. Such pages are called soft 404s, and can be confusing to both users and search engines."

        You also might want to check this article http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-seo-advice-unavailable-e-commerce-products-186882

        If you still sell the products - but you moved them to another category, or if you don't sell these products anymore, but you offer very similar products, you could consider putting a 301 to the alternative categories/products. As example you stop selling white tulips "Amsterdam" - but you still have white tulips "Utrecht" - you could redirect the first to the second. They are not identical, but an acceptable alternative for most visitors.

        In your specific case - I guess that you removed the category, but that it will be coming back next year. In that case, it's maybe better to keep the pages, but only remove the links to these pages. On the products themselves, you mention something like 'pre-ordering start in Jan. 2017. Check out of fall offers" and you mark them als "out-of-stock". You then just remove the links on your site to this subcategory. (this is quite similar to e-commerce shops with specific Christmas pages - these remain online all year long, but are online made visible as of September)

        The reason why Webmaster tools is sending you the message that these pages are not found is just to inform you. It could well be that these 404 are unintentional, and by informing you you can take the necessary measures. If the 404 is intentional, you don't really have to do anything.

        Just make sure that you also update your internal linking - to be sure that no internal links go to the pages you removed. Screaming Frog can help you to check this.

        Hope this clarifies,

        Dirk

        DutchG 1 Reply Last reply May 16, 2015, 3:42 AM Reply Quote 2
        • 1 / 1
        1 out of 3
        • First post
          1/3
          Last post

        Got a burning SEO question?

        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


        Start my free trial


        Browse Questions

        Explore more categories

        • Moz Tools

          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

        • SEO Tactics

          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

        • Community

          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

        • Digital Marketing

          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

        • Research & Trends

          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

        • Support

          Connect on product support and feature requests.

        • See all categories

        Related Questions

        • webbeemoz

          I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?

          seo consulting seo expert seo page treatment

          Hi, My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg website.com/product1/features
          website.com/product1/pricing
          website.com/product1/information and same for product2 and so on, the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer). Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help thanks

          Technical SEO | Oct 13, 2023, 2:10 AM | webbeemoz
          1
        • teamodea

          Safety Data Sheet PDFs are Showing Higher in Search Results than Product Pages

          pdf searchresultshelp

          I have a client who just launched an updated website that has WooCommerce added to it. The website also has a page of Safety Data Sheets that are PDFs that contain information about some of the products. When we do a Google search for many of the products the Safety Data Sheets show up first in the search results instead of the product pages. Has anyone had this happen and know how to solve the issue?

          Technical SEO | Jan 22, 2024, 5:48 PM | teamodea
          0
        • jessicarcf

          Removing a canonical tag from Pagination pages

          Hello, Currently on our site we have the rel=prev/next markup for pagination along with a self pointing canonical via the Yoast Plugin. However, on page 2 of our paginated series, (there's only 2 pages currently), the canonical points to page one, rather than page 2. My understanding is that if you use a canonical on paginated pages it should point to a viewall page as opposed to page one. I also believe that you don't need to use both a canonical and the rel=prev/next markup, one or the other will do. As we use the markup I wanted to get rid of the canonical, would this be correct? For those who use the Yoast Plugin have you managed to get that to work? Thanks!

          Technical SEO | Nov 15, 2016, 12:32 AM | jessicarcf
          0
        • O2C

          Blog Page Titles - Page 1, Page 2 etc.

          Hi All, I have a couple of crawl errors coming up in MOZ that I am trying to fix. They are duplicate page title issues with my blog area. For example we have a URL of www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/1 and as we have quite a few blog posts they get put onto another page, example www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/2 both of these urls have the same heading, title, meta description etc. I was just wondering if this was an actual SEO problem or not and if there is a way to fix it. I am using Wordpress for reference but I can't see anywhere to access the settings of these pages. Thanks

          Technical SEO | Dec 23, 2015, 7:00 PM | O2C
          0
        • bearpaw

          How do we keep Google from treating us as if we are a recipe site rather than a product website?

          We sell food products that, of course, can be used in recipes. As a convenience to our customer we have made a large database of recipes available. We have far more recipes than products. My concern is that Google may start viewing us as a recipe website rather than a food product website. My initial thought was to subdomain the recipes (recipe.domain.com) but that seems silly given that you aren't really leaving our website and the layout of the website doesn't change with the subdomain. Currently our URL structure is... domain.com/products/product-name.html domain.com/recipes/recipe-name.html We do rank well for our products in general searches but I want to be sure that our recipe setup isn't detrimental.

          Technical SEO | Jan 13, 2015, 8:16 PM | bearpaw
          0
        • JimDirectMailCoach

          When creating parent and child pages should key words be repeated in url and page title?

          We are in the direct mail advertising business:  PrintLabelAndMail.com Example: Parent:
          Postcard Direct Mail Children:
          Postcard Mailings
          Postcard Design
          Postcard Samples
          Postcard Pricing
          Postcard Advantages should "postcard" be repeated in the URL and Page Title? and in this example should each of the 5 children link back directly to the parent or would it be better to "daisy chain" them using each as parent for the next?

          Technical SEO | Dec 15, 2013, 10:54 AM | JimDirectMailCoach
          0
        • TopFloor

          How to Remove a website from your Bing Webmaster Tools account

          I have a site in Bing Webmaster Tools that I no longer work on.  I can't seem to find where to delete this website from my webmaster tools account.  Anyone know how (there doesn't seem to be anything obvious under Bing Help or on a Google Search).

          Technical SEO | Oct 8, 2013, 12:04 AM | TopFloor
          0
        • JU1985

          Handling 301s: Multiple pages to a single page (consolidation)

          Been scouring the interwebs and haven't found much information on redirecting two serparate pages to a single new page.  Here is what it boils down to: Let's say a website has two pages, both with good page authority of products that are becoming fazed out.  The products, Widget A and Widget B, are still popular search terms, but they are being combined into ONE product, Widget C.  While Widget A and Widget B STILL have plenty to do with Widget C, Widget C is now the new page, the main focus page, and the page you want everyone to see and Google to recognize. Now, do I 301 Widget A and Widget B pages to Widget C, ALTHOUGH Widgets A and B previously had nothing to do with one another?   (Remember, we want to try and keep some of that authority the two page have had.) OR do we keep Widget A and Widget B pages "alive", take them off the main navigation, and then put a "disclaimer" on the pages announcing they are now part of Widget C and link to Widget C? OR Should Widgets A and B page be canonicalized to Widget C? Again, keep in mind, widgets A and B previously were not similar, but NOW they are and result in Widget C. (If you are confused, we can provide a REAL work example of what we are talkinga about, but decided to not be specific to our industry for this.) Appreciate any and all thoughts on this.

          Technical SEO | Apr 16, 2012, 11:05 AM | JU1985
          0

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • Local Citation Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy

        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.